A joint venture between American Real Estate Partners, an institutional fund manager and innovative operating partner focused on data center, office, and residential/mixed-use development and repositioning throughout the Eastern United States, and Harrison Street, one of the leading investment management firms exclusively focused on alternative real assets, announced a $1 billion commitment to develop six powered shell data centers representing 2.1 million square feet of data center space in Data Center Alley, the world’s largest and most connected data center submarket, located in Ashburn and Arcola, Virginia. The data center campuses can accommodate six buildings that will range from 265,000 to 440,000 square feet in size and includes the site of the former AOL headquarters, currently operated by Yahoo, located on Pacific Boulevard in Ashburn. Once complete, the Ashburn campus will be comprised of four state-of-the-art powered shell data centers developed in a build-to-suit model for hyperscale tenants and deliver 300 MW of electrical power capacity. The Arcola campus is located on Arcola Boulevard, directly across the street from Google’s new development, and near Dulles International Airport. The Arcola development will include two modern powered shell build-to-suit data centers with approximately 100-125 MW of capacity.
The Northern Virginia data center submarket features a robust fiber network, low energy costs for tenants and landlords, and local incentives for organizations investing capital and creating jobs and is home to the largest concentration of data centers in the world. It has also been the fastest growing data center market for the past five years with increasing demand due to available power and one of the most connected markets in the U.S. Since 2018, Harrison Street has invested approximately $2.4 billion in digital assets including powered shells, carrier hotels, strategic colocations, and dark fiber, and has built a dedicated team committed to investing across verticals that are key parts of the digital ecosystem. In July 2021, Harrison Street acquired a significant minority interest in Summit Infrastructure Group, the leading dark fiber network solutions and bandwidth infrastructure provider for carriers, content providers, data center operators, large enterprises, and government agencies, with more than 600 miles of 100% underground, newly constructed metro, and regional dark fiber infrastructure in Northern Virginia.